The knuckle-draggers are coming!

On Saturday 4th of February a gang of inbred, beer swilling, racist, half-arsed fascist fuckwits known as the EDL are intending to descend upon Leicester.  

The 'master race' after a hard day on the piss

Their aim is to:

• threaten, harass, intimidate and attack anyone who looks 'a bit asian' for being 'muslamics' (as they so quaintly put it) and therefore unpatriotic
• have a pop at any 'reds' they might encounter for being mates of the 'muslamics' and also for being unpatriotic
• make loud grunting noises in public places and generally bark like a bunch of rabid mutts in protest at all things 'muslamic' and generally 'foreign'
• piss on a few pavements and leave a trail of patriotic puke
• break a few windows and maybe even try and smash up Big John's burger bar again for daring to sell possibly 'muslamic' nosh
• frighten some little children just for a laugh
• get kettled by the plod before being sent home on buses that may possibly be fitted with new air conditioning for the return journey.

Now much as we can all have a laugh at these ignorant specimens of nationalistic idiocy, it's still a serious business when they turn up, especially for those of us from an asian background, because their intention is to attack those sections of the wider working class community on the grounds of religion and race.  So it's up to all of us to oppose them, make it clear to them that they're not wanted and make sure the EDL or any other fascist gang think twice about coming back to Leicester in future. It's also useful to help some of them realise it's a very bad move hanging round with a bunch of no-marks like the EDL.

Opposition

So far, local anti-fascists have come together around the slogan of 'Love Leicester Hate Racism' in anticipation of the EDL's arrival.  LLHR represents a wide range of groups with various methods of opposing fascism, so there's something we can all get involved in. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, the SWP's front organisation, Unite Against Fascism (UAF), are already wildly self-promoting and virtually claiming that the resistance to the EDL will be pretty much all their doing.  Of course, anyone who knows anything about UAF will know this to be complete and utter bollocks.  On the day, UAF will most likely go for their usual tactic of getting kettled by the plod and the nearest they'll actually get to confronting Fred Fash will be via a war of megaphones from behind several lines of coppers.  We suspect UAF will also be encouraging Highfields yoof to join them in their cosy kettle so they too can listen to stirring speeches, chant UAF slogans for several hours and read the latest issue of Socialist Worker from cover to cover while they pass the time.

Defeatism

We also expect the local council, police and certain 'community leaders' to be true to form and adivise people to stay in doors, don't go out, run for the hills, etc. This 'advice' should be treated with the contempt it deserves as it plays right into the hands of the fascists by handing over the streets to them without giving them any real opposition.  Then again, we expect no less from such agents of the boss class.

Defend the community

It goes without saying that defence of working class communities has to be our main priority on the day.  What's essential is not that we get to chant slogans all afternoon from behind a police cordon but that we join together with residents in defending those parts of the city that the EDL will have set their sites on attacking, for example, Highfields and St Matthews.

So, we encourage everyone to get out there and stand by all those of us living in threatened areas on 4th February, to defend our streets and keep the fascists out.  And if the EDL do try and break through into our communities, then they'll be met with fierce resistance.

A few tips for on the day...

• Make sure you stick together with people you trust
• Always back each other up
• Stay sober
• Keep mobile
• Don't get kettled by the dibble
• Don't get knicked

They shall not pass!

New Resistance bulletin out now

The latest AF Resistance bulletin is a double issue covering December and January.

If you want to pick up a copy, info on where it's available in Leicester can be found HERE.  Alternatively, drop us a line at leicester@afed.org.uk and we'll pop one in the post for you.

Contents of Resistance issue #137 December 2011 / January 2012

• Anarchists Join with Sparks and Students in London on 9 November

• Erosion of Workers’ Rights

• Direct Action Gets the Goods

• Atos Festive Month of Actions

• Power to the People: Electricity Workers Say no to Austerity

• Sparks take their message to the boss’s front door

• Getting Ready to Strike

• Quantitative Easing - Creating Money for Rich People

• Greece. Down with the Stalinists and Bureaucrats!
• New Riot Statistics Revealed
• A Council Worker’s Perspective on Disability Cuts
• Rebels with a Cause
• Bank of Ideas Opens
• Prisoner Support
• False Wage Claim

Leicestershire Solidarity Group is born

The post-N30 rank and file meeting on December 1st (see earlier post) included members of various public sector unions, unemployed workers, disability activists and participants in the Occupy Leicester camp.  Together, they decided to launch an initiative that would function not only as a rank and file workers' organisation but would also have a broader community action remit.  And so, with this in mind, Leicestershire Solidarity Group was founded.

Leicester AF wishes LSG well.  For more info on Leicestershire Solidarity Group, you can visit their website HERE

November 30th report

Well done to the thousands of public sector workers in Leicestershire who struck on the 30th November and participated in the biggest demonstration seen in Leicester for many years.  The march and rally showed a broad cross-section of working class people and there was plenty of support and applause from members of the public not involved in the strike.  All in all, it was a brilliant day, with AFers either picketing their own workplaces or, if they weren't public sector workers, supporting picket lines of fellow workers.  Later, the anarchist red and black flag was carried on the march and we distributed around 1,000 AF flyers and also helped shift another 1,000 flyers plugging the December 1st rank and file workers meeting - more on this later.

One sour moment was when some knuckle-dragging idiot, who's probably swallowed too many Daily Mail or Sun editorials, thought he could 'heroically' spit at a woman marcher.  Fortunately, a have-a-go striking worker had 'a quiet word' with him.  We do hope the scab's bruises heal really slowly.

That aside, it was a great show of strength, but as we've already said, we'll need to do much more than one day strikes to be sure of anything like a victory.

And a post N30 meeting!

Coordination Meeting
To build and strengthen
Leicester workers' rank and file initiatives

Open to public sector, private sector and unemployed workers

Thursday 1st December
Leicester Secular Hall
75 Humberstone Gate
Leicester LE1 1WB

Aims of the meeting:

• to widen the curent public sector dispute into a general dispute over the repeated attacks on the working class
• to intensify the dispute and promote tactics and strategies that will improve our chances of victory
• to ensure the unions don't backtrack
• to build strong grassroots workers' organisation in Leicestershire

This event is independent of any political party or group.  The emphasis is on bringing together working people who want to organise to win.

Email: leicestersolidarity@gmail.com

A pre-N30 good news story

Leicester AF has just received a tip off that a management attempt at the part-privatisation of De Montfort University has just collapsed.  Apparently, management wanted to bring in the dodgy ‘for profit’ firm INTO to take over the running of a language department there and to provide foundation courses across the university.  However, UCU members fought a vigorous anti-privatisation campaign against INTO and DMU management. Consequently, after all the kerfuffle, management finally bottled it and pulled out of the deal. Well done to all concerned!

N30 - symbolic protest or fight to win?

Image thanks to Solidarity Federation

November 30th will be undoubtedly the most widespread strike action for many a year. With 24 public sector unions all striking on the same day, it is very welcome to see unions taking concerted action in this way.

However, it's also worth remembering that it will require much more than one day strikes to be sure of a real victory and today’s action will definitely need to be built on. But whether the trade unions are capable of doing this, especially given the weak, legalistic tactics unions are so entrenched in, is doubtful.

But aren’t the unions’ tactics already having an effect?

True, there has been some movement from the government and employers in response to positive strike ballots but this is just conciliatory noises, a ploy to make the unions look inflexible while obscuring the fact that the government and employers are actually offering us nothing. The trade unions long ago surrendered to anti-union legislation and other oppressive employment laws and have got so used to doing everything ‘through the proper legal channels’ that they are now incapable of properly fighting to win.

But it makes no sense to do everything to the letter of the law because these laws were enacted specifically to hamstring effective industrial action.

If we want to be sure of a real victory, then we’ll need to:

• Intensify strike action in spite of the anti-trade union laws and the reluctance of union high-ups to engage in action beyond anything purely symbolic 
• Spread the dispute – it’s essential that we take our struggle beyond the single issue of pensions. The way the unions have mobilised makes it seem as though it is indeed our pensions that are the central concern. This is far from the truth. The point is to show that workers reject the idea that we all have to make ‘sacrifices’ and to do so in solidarity with the whole working class, including unwaged people and service users. We cannot unite with the rest of the working class on the basis of a one-day strike over public sector pensions.
• Unite with other workers – that means broadening our aims to include private sector workers over a range of issues other than pensions.
• Go wildcat - in recent years, a number of disputes have by-passed trade union bureaucrats and we have seen a rise in forms of direct action that defy the unions’ reluctance to defy the law. From wildcat strikes to*workplace occupations, from blockades to technically unlawful secondary action, we have seen workers’ refusal to submit being expressed in ways that the state and the employers have not been able to stifle.
• Establish local strike committees between workers from different unions and workplaces - controlled from below rather than by union bureaucrats above.
• Link up with activists in the UnCut and Occupy movements. It is 12 years since the famous N30 demonstration against the G-20 in Seattle. Since then, the global ‘anti-capitalist’ movement has pushed for fundamental social change. Such newer, international forms of protest should increasingly embrace workers’ interests explicitly too.
 

What we in the Anarchist Federation are talking about is not only winning this particular dispute but also building an effective, militant and autonomous workers' movement that will set us up for future battles and future victories.


Meanwhile, the best way to guarantee any degree of success over pensions, privatisation, attacks on services, attacks on any section of the working class, is to make this strike as strong and effective as we can, to widen the issues and spread the dispute to other sectors.

So let's get to it and fight to win!